[HotNW] Story Seed

Destiny, a rising pop star with tons of play on the fledgling MTV network, has been abducted. Her disappearance has apparently confounded local authorities and the FBI has been brought in.

However, the FBI knows all too well who kidnapped the rock singer: Troy Waltham, former Apollo astronaut and current Republican congressman from Nevada. The NSA has provided top secret information to all intelligence agencies regarding Waltham's mental instability and his unhealthy obsession with Destiny.

Is Waltham mad? Yes, but the NSA is only telling half the story. You see, NASA is actually a cover organization for the NSA's black ops in outer space. Waltham signed oaths of secrecy to never discuss what really happened up there. He has broken these promises to pursue his own agenda.

So did we actually go to the moon or did they fake the moon landings? Both, it turns out. Video images for public consumption were shot on studio lots. The real Apollo missions did fly to the moon, but when Apollo 8 orbited the moon for the first time, they saw evidence of ruined structures were among the blasted craters. The moon had once been inhabited, but by whom? Many missions and analyses later revealed that the myths of Atlantis were based on a catastrophic event on the moon's surface millennia ago. These Moon Men of Silver Blood, called Atlanteans (confusion resulting from the fact that Atlas was the titan of the moon) had suffered a civilization-ending cataclysm.

Since 1969, teams of "astronauts" have been gathering information and artifacts from the ruined surface of the moon, resulting in technological advancements in all areas of science, especially space flight and temporal physics. Included among these discoveries is archaeological evidence that points to the worship of a war goddess by the Atlanteans. A goddess that happens to look a lot like Destiny.

Waltham's plan is to hijack a space shuttle carrying an experimental time machine, fly to the moon, whisk himself and Destiny back to the past, convince the Atlanteans that they are gods and somehow prevent the cataclysm from happening.

Thus the story could start with an investigation, hijinks at Cape Canaveral, a space shuttle chase and a confrontation on the surface of the moon outside a temple of the goddess. Assuming that Waltham initially succeeds with his plan, the time machine works and he goes into to the past, the present would alter greatly. The Atlanteans would still be around...

Sidenote: Perhaps Mars can be worked into this as well. Perhaps the Men of Iron Blood (Mars) and the Men of Silver Blood (Moon) had a mutally destructive war (aha! the 80's thematic element of the Cold War turned hot - Russia vs. US). The rusty soil of Mars is what's left of those people, some of whom managed to escape to earth. The Men of Copper (Earth), the indigenous inhabitants, were slowly pushed out by the alien Men of Iron. Modern humans are the descendants of these invading Martians (iron blood - hemoglobin).